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Browsing videos on TikTok or YouTube can be a hit-and-miss affair, with gems lurking amid mediocre efforts. But researchers have found that switching to another video, or skipping forwards and backwards in the same one, actually makes people more bored. Writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Tam and colleagues report how they carried out seven experiments involving a total of more than 1,200 participants. The first, involving 140 participants, revealed that people tended to switch between videos more when they rated the content more boring, while the second – an online survey involving 231 participants – suggested people thought having the option to skip through a video or switch to another would make viewing a video less boring.

Data from a group of 166 undergraduates suggests participants felt more bored when allowed to skip about within a video than when they were not able to, while results from 159 undergraduates revealed they reported higher levels or boredom when given a collection of five-minute videos they could switch between, compared with a single 10-minute video. The researchers found similar results when the latter experiment was repeated with 174 undergraduates who were allowed to pick their own videos from YouTube – although the size of the effect was smaller.

However, when they looked at the results from 175 participants of a broader age range, they found no difference in reported boredom when the participants were given five-minute videos they could switch between, or a single 10-minute video to watch. What’s more, unlike in the earlier experiments, the order in which participants undertook the viewing tasks had an influence on their levels of reported boredom. Tam said one explanation for the differences could be demographics , noting the later experiments involved participants with a broader age range and an older mean age than the earlier experiments. “We speculated that people of different ages may have different habits when it comes to watching videos and switching,” she said. “How people consume videos and how this affects boredom may vary based on age and digital media habits, but further research is needed to explore this.”